Hello Snappers! Snapdragons? Snapchatters. Those who practice the sorcery of Snapchat tery. Whatever you call yourself, you use Snapchat and you love it and you kinda kill it. Your Snaps are always on fleek because you’ve followed our Snapchat Profile Picture & Selfies Guide, and now you have set your sights to taking over the Web.

Snapchat Online Pitfalls

First let’s talk about what not to do to log-in to Snapchat for free. You may have seen all sorts of apps and websites offering you remote access to your Snapchat account. This is usual; such third-party systems always crop up around any popular app or service. And while some of these may be on the up and up, and truly are designed only to help Snapchatters gain access to their accounts however they wish. However, there are third party websites that are not trustworthy. It’s important to know if the website you’re using is legitimate or not. Here’s some clues that you should not trust a website:

Contact the website. Check the contact tab and call or email. If you can’t get a hold of anyone or the number is not in service, the website might be fake. Note that it’s not enough that the website lists phone numbers. Anyone can make up phone numbers.No, you’ll need to actually try to contact them through this.

Look at the address and see if it is verified by Google; there should be a location or safety ranking displayed in the address bar.

Google has this nifty safebrowse thing. Just paste https://google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=” in front of a web address and you’ll see whether it’s suspicious or not.

Really look around on the website. Are there grammatical errors? That’s a red flag that this site was put together hastily (so it can be abandoned just as quickly — the old “fly by night routine”). Are they promoting weird stuff that has nothing to do with the website? That’s a sign that the site is nothing but a transparent money grab. Get out of there ASAP.

Our personal favorite: reddit. Loads of technically savvy bastards on that site and they generally will let you know if a website’s legit or not. No one can overturn the hidden bits of code on a website like a small Reddit army mobilized by righteous indignation, so if the site you’re looking at has something dodgy, they can tell you.

While researching this topic, we came across three websites that claim you could (and should) use them to check your Snapchat. One of them even claimed that it was the only way to check online. We ran all three through the Google safebrowse trick previously mentioned and they came up okay; however, threads on reddit raised some flags. Bottom line: we don’t advise using them, so we didn’t link them. If you do, do so at your own risk and if you’ve had success, let us know in the comments.

REMINDER: Don’t click on anything that looks shady!!! It will ruin your life.

Snapchat Online

Now here are a couple of trusted, tried and true methods to check your Snapchat online for free.

So, the day has finally come. Snapchat has heard the call of the thousands of loyal Snapchat users who were using third-party methods to manage their accounts online, and they do have an access portal… of a sort. You can log in to Snapchat online at Snapchat‘s website. Yeah, it’s right there.

Now, admittedly, this is only for managing stuff in your account. From the official Snapchat website, you can download your Snapcode, change your password, unlock your account, and delete your account. No, you cannot send and receive messages through this system, but those functions are nonetheless things that many users appreciate being able to do on their computers. Changing a password, unlocking an account, and deleting an account are all things that you may be called on to do online at some point, say (heaven forbid) you should lose your phone.

And as for being able to download a Snapcode, well, it’s just more convenient. Moving and managing files tends to be much more doable on a laptop or desktop than it is on a mobile device, so if you’re planning on keeping your Snapcode on hand for embedding into emails, putting on your website, or maybe even putting at the end of your YouTube video, now you can.

For a fuller understanding of what Snapchat does and does not allow you to do with your Snapcode, take a look at the Snapcode Usage Guidelines from their support site.

Sometimes changing passwords and such is a bit more secure if you’re on a PC. But even if you wanted to use your phone, you can go to Snapchat’s website and login from your web browser.

But perhaps, you just wanted to save some data (read: money), and so you would rather your mobile device not enter into it at all. That’s cool. We have a method for that as well.